In Africa the poet introduces Curio inquiring after the story of Hercules and Antaeus, which is recounted to him by one of the natives, and after - wards relates the particulars of his being circumvented, de - feated, and killed by Juba.

If you can conjure something of substance from the flux of your life—if you can anchor yourself in the earth, like Antaeus, the mythical giant who grew stronger every time his feet touched the ground—you are at home in the world, at least for that meal.

Founded in 1991 as an offshoot of the Mark Taper Forum, Antaeus has been producing world-class revivals of classic plays from the Greeks and Shakespeare to Ibsen, O'Neill and Beckett, all on a shoestring budget in small theaters around LA.

In “The Break,” a virtuoso comic performance that first appeared in the Spring 1994 issue of Antaeus, her younger self (who goes by the Hebrew name of Shoshana) solemnly announces her disengagement from the “white-haired, dewlapped, thick-waisted, thick-lensed hag” (who goes by the Greek name of Cynthia) — a writer disgustingly devoid of that hunger for success that drives great artists.